Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 29, 1990 TAG: 9006300484
SECTION: SMITH MOUNTAIN TIMES PAGE: SMT-2 EDITION: BEDFORD/FRANKLIN
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Jones had been a young British sailor then, a life he chose when he was 16.
There was no salt in the air recently when Jones, wearing a decidedly English ascot and an open-collared shirt, sat in the living room with a view of inland, man-managed water and told about how it had been.
Jones is in his 80s, and he apparently has outlasted a muskrat that used to join him in his daily swim. The swimming is done in what Jones calls "the estuary," down the hill from the house near Smith Mountain Lake State Park.
Jones said he hasn't seen the muskrat "for some time. We had a flood. I haven't seen him since."
On a June morning, he had already had his swim.
You know from the accent that Jones is England-born - in Liverpool, actually.
He tells a good story, and he is not as reserved as Englishmen are thought to be.
He is a man who respects humor and has a talent for laughter.
But, to get back to the second mate and the Swede.
A younger Jones and the mate had just settled into sipping their dark bock beer in the Le Havre cafe when a woman came over, greeted them rather warmly and asked them to buy her a drink.
The mate, obviously in a surly mood, told her, "We didn't invite you over here. Clear off."
This behavior led the woman to complain of mistreatment to a huge Swede who "was drinking his bock in a very morose manner."
The morose Swede, Jones said, "had arms as thick as your body."
Jones' eyes glistened at the memory.
"The second mate didn't waste any time," he said. "He hit the Swede with a chair."
The sailors ran, and Jones asked the second mate whether he thought he might have killed the Swede, given the way the chair went to pieces when it struck his head.
Don't worry, the mate said, it had been a very cheap chair.
Jones was at sea from the mid-1920s until the early 1950s, when he and his German-born wife, Hildegard, came to the United States.
The seaman taught astronomy, physics and navigation at Virginia Military Institute for more than a quarter of a century. He had the honorary title of sea captain when he came to VMI. The school added the extra title of major.
But, to get back to Liverpool - where Jones' mother had six sons and, "When the sixth came along, my mother said, `This is getting a bit monotonous.' "
At 16 and out of school, Jones was considering either following his father into the clothing business or following his heart to sea.
At this time, Jones said, he had lunch with a very good-looking woman called Mary Black, who had "a cunning instinct for buying stuff."
Mary Black was exceptional because she was in business, and in those days "a woman's place was between the kitchen and the bedroom."
Mary Black told young Jones the business world was not for him.
"Roland," she said. "You're a romantic kid. If you want my advice, go to sea."
Roland Jones first sailed on the "Greystoke Castle," a ship less than 200 feet long and "an all-out speed of five knots."
I could have rowed faster than that," Jones said.
The ship's individualistic captain ignored advice to put into Key West during a 1926 storm and reached Havana with a load of cattle.
It was not easy. Jones said the crew was on ship's biscuit and water.
The biscuits were full of weevils and the crew at first picked them out by hand before eating the biscuits.
"After a while," Jones said, "this became tedious, so we ate them, weevils and all."
The trouble was that the ship was thought to be lost with all hands, and the next-of-kin were paid off by the insurance company.
The "Greystoke Castle" had to be sold to cut the losses.
In 1935, aboard the 12-passenger "Munster Castle," Roland and Hildegard met. They are still married after more than 50 years.
There is a picture of the ship, beating through a heavy sea, on the living room wall.
There was troop-carrying on the "Queen Mary" and "Queen Elizabeth" during World War II. There were tours as first officer on some of the best-remembered liners in history.
But airplanes were replacing the great liners for Atlantic crossings, and Jones didn't care for the effete seagoing associated with mere cruises.
"The rugged kind of seagoing was gone," Jones said.
He had studied at sea and came to the United States, where he was given the equivalent of a bachelor of science by the state of Virginia.
He taught in high schools in Tidewater Virginia before coming to VMI.
Twelve years ago, the Joneses came to live full-time on the lake, steered there by a colleague at VMI.
It was not supposed to be full time at first. "We were going to make this a holiday place," Jones said.
His small sailboat, "Quixote," is docked down the hill, and, continuing the Don Quixote theme, there is a rowboat named "Sancho."
Roland and Hildegard Jones like to load visitors up with sandwich bread and let them throw it to the fish that thrash about near the dock.
The "Quixote" needs work, Roland Jones said.
There was no salt in the air, but Jones stood straight on the tiny dock and said, "I think still, at heart, I'm a sailor."
by CNB